Thursday, April 23, 2009

So, over the last few days, I've been able to attend windows 7/Windows 2008 R2 training. This is basically the next set of software for server and client computers. Overall, the training was great.

The keynote was given by a couple of VPs of windows, and it was incredible to hear them talk about the decisions they'd made about certain feature sets or timelines, because it really gave great insight into a lot of the reasons why people hate windows, or vista in particular.

You often see, and/or hear people bashing Vista or windows, and after hearing the pure genius of the windows guys, it just makes the bashers sound completely ignorant. A lot of the thought process that went into Vista was explained, as well as the direction moving forward. I feel like this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, to hear behind closed doors, from the guys that are in charge of the world's most popular piece of software. There were about 120 IT Professionals from around the world attending this training, and it was mostly on features of the new versions of windows that are still not public yet, so I can't say much about those features, but I've gotta say. Win7 will blow the door wide open for innovation, and what an operating system should do.

All of the training makes me want to get back into true IT engineering. DNS, architecture, AD, and so on. It was so envigorating seeing the new iterations of these solutions and how they work- so very interesting, because the world runs on these technologies, and this is the team that is literally changing the way the world works.

We also got to visit the new commons area up at the new campus. Oh man... what a beautiful place. Water fountains, restaurants, stores, a hair salon, a bar, a soccer field, and so much more. It reminds me that I work for one of the greatest companies. Just not at one of the greatest companies. Yet another reason why it sounds so good to work for a product team. I would feel so inspired if I worked on interesting cool IT technology that changes the world. Some truly genius people in those groups. It reminds me of my teaching days, when I could get up in front of a class and talk about subnetting for an hour off the top of my head. It takes a person truly passionate about technology to get that into something, and I'm kind of craving being an expert on something like that again. Too bad there's no budget for training materials, and the books cost 70 a pop for the '08 server stuff. ugh.

Monday, April 20, 2009

We had a pretty great weekend. We went to the pacific science center with Judah, and he loved it. He was so excited and amped up the whole time, haha. So many buttons, colors, objects, and so on. We then tooled over to Jeremy's house to attend Sarah's birthday party, and it was nice to see everyone there. Seems like it was everyone that used to come to young adults... hah.

Well, some big changes coming for young adults. Our leaders, Mark & Lori, have decided to step down and move on. Clint and Amaryllis are stepping in, and it should be a pretty good change. Fresh perspective, new ideas, and so on. There are a few concerns around the current leadership team not wanting The Edge to be run like the youth group is run, but I think we'll get it all worked out. Clint and Amaryllis are bright people that are very respectful. So here's to the future of The Edge!

Next topic. I've got a couple days of training starting tomorrow, to get trained on some of the new features and IT related info of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2. I'm excited, because this is the kind of thing that excites me about IT. Technology... how to deploy it, how it works, how to fix it. I've been getting exceedingly bored out of my mind at work lately because I've just been babysitting a bunch of work and overviewing bugs logged. Not very technical or interesting. I'm hoping this will be a bit of a fresh breath of air for me, and give me some good training time on some new technology that we'll haveto adopt. I just hope I'll be able to use that training in my job somehow. Sometimes I think it would be more fun to work for a smaller company and run a datacenter or lab, instead of work on incredibly complex IT applications that relegate me to "review bugs" all day long and manage schedules...

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Thx for the link Mom.

If any of you are interested in where the country is going, the consensus is growing that inflation is coming (front page of msn.com). The fed is printing money to help cover the 5.8 trillion dollars that Obama has committed to spend so far.

Reading the article is very interesting, because it addresses some of the thoughts and reasons behind why hyperinflation starts and how it is pushed higher, and it's funny, it feels like I'm reading some of the news articles about what we are doing to get out of the recession. Kind of sad.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Sunshine and good weather always lift moods. Makes me want to take a day off and take the family somewhere. Pacfic science center or something? I dunno. I think I get discounts for going there...

Makes me want to eat meat. I'm fasting meat and pop for three weeks, and this is the last week. I guess pretty much everything makes me want to eat meat lately, but good weather is just one more reason.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Refreshing the house.

So we got an estimate for carpet, and we decided we're going to go with that. So, we started painting last night while the old carpet is down, for a few reasons: we want the carpet to match the paint, and we want to paint while the old carpet is down in case we spill. So we painted maybe a third of our bedroom last night and taped most of it all off. We got rid of the extremely ugly aztec red wall, and painted over it with a darker warmer red color, and started painting over the super ugly peach with a gray based offwhite. It already looks a ton better. I'm so tired of seeing a peach glow in the house from all the ugly walls. Most of the downstairs has already been painted, just the dining room is left there. We need to paint the rest of the bedroom and the hallway area connecting upstairs/downstairs before we lay the carpet, and Dad is going to come over on friday during the day to help out with that (part of a little agreement he had with us to help paint our house in leiu of cash when we went on our mission trip to India. He's already painted the downstairs area, so I figure we're even after friday).

We had to go with a 15ft roll of carpet to avoid some pretty ugly seems, so we had very limited choice in that range, but the one that was there matched what we are going for and works with our budget, so I think we're solid there.

All in all, I'm fairly excited about refreshing the house. We've had ugly walls and nasty 10+ year old carpet ever since I've moved in, and having new fresh paint and carpet can really make you feel better about your living space, and in turn give you some motivation to keep it cleaner, too. hehe.